2014-12-26
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Undated photo of Chinese poet Wang Zang.
RFA
A Beijing poet and political activist who posted a performance art selfie in support of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement has been subjected to torture and mistreatment while in police detention, his lawyer said on Friday.
Wang Zang is being held in Beijing’s No. 1 Detention Center on suspicion of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” after being taken away by police on Oct. 1.
His detention came after he posted a photo of himself online holding an umbrella and making a middle-fingered gesture in support of Hong Kong’s Occupy Central mass civil disobedience movement calling for universal suffrage in the former British colony.
According to his lawyer Sui Muqing, Wang was held in a padded cell for the first five days of his detention and subjected to intense stress, leading to a heart attack.
“He was deprived of sleep and forced to remain standing for four nights in a row, which led to his heart attack,” Sui told RFA, adding: “He had never been diagnosed with heart disease up until that point.”
“He was also beaten up a bit … although not particularly seriously.”
Sui, who held a brief meeting with Wang in the detention center on Thursday morning, said the charges against his client are based on his performance art, including the photograph, and his poetry and writings.
“The performance art part relates to the photograph in support of Occupy Central as well as his support for the human rights lawyers who got beaten up in [the northeastern city of] Jiansanzhuang,” he said.
Sui said via his microblog account on Thursday that Wang Zang’s appearance had “changed a great deal” since his detention.
“Unfortunately, owing to technical considerations, I was unable to take a photo,” he wrote.
Other works
Wang has also used performance art photographs to show support for detained Guangzhou rights lawyer Guo Feixiong, women’s rights activist Ye Haiyan and to commemorate the execution of Mao-era dissident Lin Zhao, Sui said.
Wang’s poetry is also being cited as evidence to support the charges, including “Epitaph Without a Tombstone,” a lament for uncounted numbers of unnamed Chinese citizens whose deaths are linked to government actions.
“The cemetery is a foreign import, where the corpses of the people lie, sending out random roots and shoots,” the poem reads.
A later verse takes up imagery of dreaming, in a veiled reference to President Xi Jinping’s slogan, “the Chinese dream.”
“To begin with, the dream is a wet dream … and our crotches are full of the soldiers of the party,” the poem says.
The 64-verse structure echoes the date of the June 4, 1989 crackdown on the Tiananmen Square democracy movement, while the last three verses each consist solely of the repeated words “Darkness,” “Emptiness,” “Self-Immolation” and, finally, “Om.”
